Copyright Why Not!

Many people believe that if you find it online and you can download it or copy it, why not!  As an educator, I also found myself not so concerned about teaching about copyright as I felt we were working within the Fair Use guidelines anyway. Why not!

But did I need to rethink this?  Outside of school, our students are using a wide variety of technologies and at times downloading images, music and videos and uploading them to   social media platforms, weblogs, and blogs, to mention just a few.

Teaching media literacy, such as copyright rules, will prepare our students to live in the real world as well as teaching them important critical thinking skills.  But how are we going to add this to an already packed curriculum?  One way is by embedding the lesson into an existing project or activity, or collaborating with others is another.  In the 6^th grade our students were introduced to copyright, fair use and the rights they have as creators through a collaborative project between the computer teacher, school library media specialist, and the music teacher.  Each teacher had a key component of the lesson which ending with them creating their own music and copyrighting it.  By collaborating with three teachers, it decreased the time each of us spent on the lesson, and made it very exciting for the students to learn.

But the lesson does not end here.  Copyright training is a process and needs to be taught or reinforced by all teachers in every subject to some degree. If the social studies teacher requires images in their report, students need to cite that source properly.  I clearly understand that under the realm of the school it isn’t usually necessary to acknowledge the creator of the media; however, it is necessary for our students to know outside of school it does matter.  This by no way means that our students will start citing their images on Facebook tomorrow.  Instead it will perhaps prompt them to think about the possible repercussions of copyright infringement.

In conclusion, today’s tech-savvy middle school students download images, and music not only for school but also for their own personal use.  It is vital to ensure that they understand their legal rights and responsibilities under copyright.  As teachers we can incorporate the teachings of copyright and, in turn, critical thinking skills in almost every subject.  It also opens up some thoughts to collaborative projects between the classroom teacher, technology teacher, and/or the school library media specialist.  Why not!